One Customer Review of “Regional Broadband”

Review by swa_kildare, May 9, 2016

Overall Rating

Performance

Reliability

Customer Service

Value for money

This review may help others in a similar situation to ourselves.

Where I live in Kildare the 3G & 4G services have extremely poor reception with meteor and three, Vodafone is okay.
eir says the phone line is a 3Mbps G-DMT Standard ADSL. My line was receiving 3.8X to 3.9X Mbps Tweaked with a billion 7800N up to approximately 2 months ago.
My sister lives 12ft behind me and best was ever received on her phone line was 2.6X Mbps using billion 7800N to tweak the SNR margin.
With 4 users it would come to almost a standstill, so her teenagers had to take turns online.

In November 2015 I organised for my sister to sign up with regional broadband for a trial on there 10Mbps package. (10Mbps down 2Mbps up) 8.5X Mbps during the daytime and nighttime 1.5 to 2 Mbps.
As most of the Internet stuff is done at night time it wasn’t going to be worth cancelling eir, so we ended the trial period with regional broadband.

However in February 2016 Regional broadband contacted me to tell me that they had upgraded the area and welcomed me back with one month free.
I asked questions about the upgraded service and was happy.
I spoke with my sister and I accepted on her behalf.

The first two days daytime speeds 8.4X to 8.9Mbps nighttime speeds 2.6X to 3.7X Mbps.
Better than eircom/eir’s daytime speeds.
(With 4 users online youtube wired connections for test purposes all loading a 1080p https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v2L2UGZJAM at the same time 8:45 PM speed test.net 1.14Mbps) screenshot.
Definitely an improvement!
But it actually got a bit better.
It obviously needed a few days to settle down as speeds improved.

“week days” Daytime download speeds 1pm 9.4X to 9.7X and upload 1.7XMbps.
Nighttime download speeds 9pm 3.4X to 5.1X and upload 1.4X to 1.5XMbps
“weekends” download speeds app. 1pm 5.2X to 6.9X and upload 1.6XMbps.
Nighttime download speeds 9pm 2.1X to 3.6X and upload 1.4X to 1.4XMbps again this is excellent on week days and very good at weekends. The congestion on eir.ie would be 0.8X 1.0X Mbps with no one online everyday.
A speed test done last Saturday night 16 April 2015 2 PlayStation 3′s and one PC on YouTube at 11 PM down = 2.74 Mbps up = 1.71 Mbps
3 speed tests Today 28 Apr 3:56AM ping 12ms #1 down= 9.68 up=1.95 #2 down=9.69 up=1.96 #3 down=9.70 up=1.96 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5GcO8ePgBg
Speed tests have been carried out at “speedtest.net” and for a non-Flash-based “testmy.net” and JD’s speed tester.exe

So the company has a small handful of old bad reviews on boards.ie but they are outdated in my opinion because they talk about dishes on the roof…
What they installed here was a round pvc box approximately 20cm.
Regional broadband’s service are good enough to support 3 PlayStation 3′s playing GTA online plus a Facebook user doing God knows what, 8 PM to 2 AM at weekends with no drop issues.
I know this is a fact because I was connected with one of PlayStation.
Of course fingers crossed that the company continues to improve their services.
I called RBB to find out My sister’s usage and I was told, 109GB in a 37 day period.

It is so good compared with eir’s dreadful speeds, we are getting in a second connection this week, a 5Mbps package solely for a special needs child. €5. less than eir.ie and of course it is double the speed.
I will definitely be moving as soon as my eir contract ends, I’d move in a flash if I could.
I find the staff to be pleasant and easy to deal with answering all questions I asked.

My star rating is honest and I will change it if the service goes downhill at a later date.

I’ve been told that the higher packages do not drop as low when congested, for example the 15 meg package may only drop to 4 to 6 meg.
I have not tested as yet, so it may only be hearsay .

Star rating is reduced due to congestion at night.
Although there are no problems with the performance I have dropped a star due to the congestion.
It is definitely reliable here 5 stars.
Customer service have been polite 5 stars.
Value for money? It’s okay and of course it would be better if was cheaper